


Squirt

by WriterGirl128



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Platonic Relationships, but he is trying to be better, pidge is a genius and keith loves his family is the jist of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 05:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterGirl128/pseuds/WriterGirl128
Summary: Keith wants to find some answers. The smallest paladin might be able to help.





	Squirt

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy here we go first of all, first Voltron fic, I binged the entire series in the course of two days instead of studying for midterms, please be gentle with me  
>   
> Some headcanons pertaining to this fic listed at the end (may be helpful to read first, might not)  
>   
> Galra Keith has my heart and soul and I live for fluffy family fics paired with some serious deep-seated angst so here we are please enjoy  
>   
> Also all relationships are platonic but *Klance* if you squint

“Hey, squirt. You got a sec?”

Pidge looked up from her laptop and blinked blearily, eyes adjusting momentarily from the brightness of the screen. If it was anyone else, she’d have kicked the fluuto out of him for the nickname, but it was Keith. So she just smiled, setting the laptop aside. “What’s up?”

He returned the smile, but there was something off about it, like it couldn’t quite reach his eyes. He crossed to sink down beside her, leaning back against the wall of the hangar. “I… have a favor to ask you.”

There was something unsure in his voice, and she felt her eyebrows draw together. “Is everything okay?”

He glanced up, nodding again and offering her another smile. “Yeah, fine.”

She didn’t buy it. Still, she played along, nodding slowly as she shifted to face him better, feet drawn up under her. “Uh huh,” she hummed, but didn’t push. “What’s going on?”

He paused for a second, before lifting his gaze to hers with a wince. “Do you think you’d be able to hack the Galaxy Garrison?”

Pidge’s expression blanked, earlier concern overshadowed with surprise. She blinked at him. “You—you want to… _what?”_

“Do you think it’s possible?” he asked again, and gave a small shrug. He scratched at the side of his head, fingers disappearing in his dark hair. “I mean, I know they’ve got a killer security system and all, and the situation isn’t exactly _ideal_ —”

“—meaning we’re a billion light years away, on the other side of the universe _?”_

Keith dropped his hand, almost sheepish. “Uh—yeah. Yeah, meaning that. But there’s gotta be some way to work around that, don’t you think?” He shifted in his seat. “I mean, you’ve hacked into Galra communication systems, and security protocols, and weapons’ controls. That’s gotta be way more sophisticated than anything developed on Earth, right? Hacking the Garrison should be no problem after all that.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. This was—this was _important_ to him. She wondered what the full story was. “Looks like _someone_ wants to expunge his record clean,” she joked lightly.

There was a beat of silence where a little bit of the anxious tension melted out of his shoulders. The ghost of a smile tugged at his lips, and he raised an eyebrow at her. “Funny.”

She returned the smile, bumping his elbow with her own. “I try.”  But then her smile flickered a little, and she glanced at her still-open laptop in thought. She adjusted her glasses as she did, and let the ideas roll through her head as she considered the possibility. After a moment, she sighed. “I’d have to try out a few different mechanisms in order to triangulate the location, and even then, we might still be too far away for our sensors to detect anything. We might physically need to get closer to Earth before I can even _try.”_

Keith nodded as he took in the words, as if he expected as much. “If we—” He broke off, voice tightening slightly and cutting his words off. He took a breath. “If we get you close enough, though? Do you think you could do it?”

Pidge scoffed. “Please. After sifting through and cutting string after string of Galra security invisibly? Of course I can.”

Keith smiled again at that, at Pidge’s confidence, and it was his turn to bump her elbow with his. “I never doubted you, kid.”

She beamed at that but again, the smile didn’t last long. It only took a few ticks for her pride to fade and that concern she’d felt earlier to return in an insistent flood. She drew her eyebrows together gently, her gaze wavering. “Can I—can I ask _why,_ Keith?” she pressed, and shook her head. “Because I know you care more than you let people see, but I never figured your _Garrison record_ fell into that category of things you care about.”

The older paladin hesitated, then, and Pidge knew that there was something deeper going on, something that made him a little bit unsteady. He tore his gaze from hers, dropping his eyes to his fingers as his eyebrows drew together slightly. He exhaled audibly, worrying his lower lip. It was making Pidge more worried, the unreadable expression on his face, that look in his eyes that was so _unlike Keith_ that her heart jumped slightly in her chest. She was about to reach out, to try and console him, somehow, when he tilted his head slightly.

“The Kerberos mission was designed around the idea that there was alien life out there, somewhere,” he began, and a small weight sank in Pidge’s stomach at the moon’s name. “Your dad, and Shiro, and Matt—their objective on the mission was to collect samples from the different layers of the moon, looking for signs of life.”

Pidge nodded, dropping her own eyes slightly. “Right,” she agreed. “Before they were, you know, abducted by Galra and imprisoned. Lost to the cosmos, for all we know.”

Keith winced slightly. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll find them.” He grew silent for a dobosh or two, but Pidge knew there was more to what he wanted to say. “I thnk the Garrison knew more about alien life than they were letting on,” he got out finally, frowning deeper at his fingers. “When Shiro crashed down in that desert and we brought him back to the shack, I—I went back, that night, to the crash site. And there was no sign anything had ever happened. No debris, no scorch marks, no rubble. Nothing.”

Pidge brought her gaze higher, again, though Keith’s eyes still drifted. “You think they covered it up?” she asked, curiosity lifting that heaviness in her chest slightly. “You think they, what—kept it secret?”

Keith sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted, and shook his head. “It’s a possibility, yeah, but it’s also just as likely that they took everything to the labs to examine. It just—it seemed _too_ perfect.”

She nodded, understanding. “It is a little sketchy,” she agreed.

The older paladin tapped his fingers along his thigh for a moment. “I looked into some of the older Garrison files,” he admitted, a little slower than before, and cut Pidge a glance, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly. “Did a little digging of my own. Nothing _nearly_ as complex as what you could do, but—” He shrugged. “You’d be surprised what a couple of internet searches can pull up in terms of records people try to keep hidden.”

She felt a surge of pride. “Did you find anything?”

With a sigh, Keith tilted his head into another half-nod. “Sort of. There were some protocols they’d tried to keep out of the public eye, other failed missions that ended suddenly that they never explained. That just sort of—cut off, no results, no conclusions. Like the team on the mission just disappeared.”

Pidge’s fingers tightened slightly around her knees, and she shifted, drawing them closer. “That’s awful.”

“It is,” he agreed with a nod. “And the real kicker is that they went back for _decades,_ Pidge. Like they’d been covering up alien stuff for nearly a century before the Kerberos mission was ever deployed.”

Something crawled up Pidge’s spine, something unwelcome that made goosebumps rise on her arms and the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end. She dropped her hands lower, fingers curling around her own ankles tightly. “Why now?” she asked, frowning slightly at him. “Why are you only saying something about it now?”

His eyes grew apologetic, and he glanced away again. “There’s was always so much going on,” he explained, but there was guilt in his words. “Everything with Zarkon and the Galra Empire. Honestly, I kind of forgot about it entirely, until things started slowing down.”

Pidge understood. She, too, lost sight of some things along the way. Caught up in the heat of war, and all. She sighed, offering him a nod. “I get it,” she sympathized. “Sorry.”

He nodded, too. “ ’S okay.”

“Seriously, though,” she pressed slightly, looking to him again. “What brought all of this up now?”

Keith hesitated slightly, again, and it made Pidge’s insides squirm. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for at tick, before scrubbing tiredly at his face. With a sigh, he dropped them back to his sides, thumping lightly on the floor. “I had this—vision. Thing. I don’t know.” When Pidge just continued to look at him blankly, he pressed forward. “When Shiro and I went to make an alliance with the Blade of Marmora.”

Realization dawned, and Pidge nodded knowingly. “When you let them beat the quiznak out of you during the Trials and it nearly killed you,” she recalled. “Right.”

“Knowledge or death,” Keith muttered, more to himself than to her, then shook it off. Still, he didn’t meet her eyes. “But—yeah. It was this… I don’t know. Almost like a dream, I guess. I was with my dad, and he gave me the Blade, and the ground was shaking under us.”

Pidge frowned, growing absorbed in the words. “Like an earthquake?”

But the Red Paladin shook his head. “No. No, more like—like something was hitting it, something big, and making it move. Over and over again. Like an army marching.” He hesitated again, his eyelids fluttering slightly as his eyes wavered. “Kept telling me my mother was coming.”

Something clenched tightly in Pidge’s chest. “Your mother?” she parroted back, but her voice was soft. “Your Galran mother?”

Keith’s eyes cut to her, but they weren’t sharp, and his lips twisted slightly. “No, Pidge,” he said dryly, “my Altean mother.”

It took Pidge a tick to realize he was making a joke, and the tension in her chest, in her shoulders, uncoiled slightly. The corner of her lips twitched at him. “Smartass.”

He snorted. “Better not let Shiro hear you talking like that, squirt.”

Her concern for her fellow paladin fading slightly, she let her knees drop sideways to the floor and crossed her ankles under her as she gave him a heatless glare. “I’m almost sixteen,” she shot back at him, narrowing her eyes. “I can say what I want.”

Keith rolled his eyes at her, but some of the tension had melted out of his shoulders as well, and she appreciated it because she knew that wasn’t an _easy_ thing for him to do. He’d always been a little on-edge, a little hot tempered. It wasn’t his fault entirely, but he’d always been a little bit… closed off. He had walls up. And that was _before_ he’d found out he was Galra.

She couldn’t really imagine experiencing something like that. Something that made her question everything she thought she knew about herself, like she _knew_ Keith did, no matter how hard he tried to hide it from his fellow paladins. But they knew. They’d see his gaze drift to some faraway place, not quite focused on anything, almost blind.  They’d hear his hesitation, even in battle, before making certain decisions, like he had to ask himself _is this the right thing to do, or is this what Galra would do,_ like he wasn’t really sure what part of himself was _him_ and what was _them_. They’d notice him grow quiet, sometimes, while they ate dinner or did their team bonding activities, a little bit drawn-in, a little more reserved than usual. They’d see him flinch, when their allies or natives of whatever planet they were at would spit the word, “ _Galra,”_ a snarl between their teeth, lumping everyone it pertained to into a singular classification of _monster._

Pidge, for one, had expected him to close himself off further after finding out. And, for a while, he did. He avoided direct eye contact and kept things _overly normal_ while he interacted with them. But one night, as she made her way back to her room from Green’s bay—which she had taken no time in converting into a makeshift lab—voices drifted to her. Her steps had slowed as she identified the source. The door to Keith’s room was slightly ajar, a crack of light spilling into the hallway from inside. And Pidge hesitated, not wanting to eavesdrop, but worry and concern are powerful things and she’d found herself inching closer to the door, steps silent. Small feet were good for something, at least.

But she didn’t stay for long. The voices, or voice, rather, was clearer—comforting murmurs of assurance, “ _We’re here, kiddo, we’re_ with _you_ , _we’re all with you_ ” coming from the oldest paladin, as they sat together at the foot of Keith’s bed. Ragged, uneven breath that ripped at Pidge’s heart like talons. The soft whir of gears turning in a cybernetic arm as Shiro held him closer, the younger paladin’s face pressed into his chest, fingers clawing into the fabric of Shiro’s shirt. Fingers that shook, and gripped, and seemed to be holding on for dear life.

Pidge left after that, heart hurting. But after that night, Keith got a little better. Greeted them with smiles in the morning, even fell into his normal verbal-sparring with Lance that the hangar had been so quiet, lately, without. And his gaze would drift a little less, and his decisions would be less hesitant, and when someone would shoot sharp words that hit a little close to home, he wouldn’t shake off the hands extended to him in comfort, like he once did. Slowly but surely, he began to let his guard down again.

And Pidge knew it was hard for him to do. So when he sat there, beside her, cracking a joke about being part alien and looking _at ease_ with her, well. Pidge knew not to take a good thing for granted. She smiled a little, blinking out of her reverie and back to the situation at hand. “So—what happened next?” she asked. “In the dream. Vision?” She waved her hand slightly. “Whatever.”

The older teenager next to her heaved a sigh, offering a small shrug. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I woke up, I guess. It was over.”

She extended a hand to his, and as if an automatic response, his fingers wrapped around hers. “I’m sorry you didn’t get any answers,” Pidge said sincerely, and she was.

He smiled at her a little, squeezing her hand. “That’s kind of where I got the whole ‘hacking the Garrison’ idea from, actually. Do you remember the scanner you built from lab scraps?”

Pidge brightened. “Of course I do,” she assured him. “Picked up all kinds of alien signals with that beauty. I can only imagine what I could’ve built with materials _approved_ by the Garrison—”

Keith’s eyes glinted., and her breath stopped short.

The words died on her lips as she felt her eyes blow wide. She blinked at him, understanding dawning on her like a tidal wave. “Oh my quiznak,” she exhaled, blinking and drawing her gaze away, mind starting to race. “ _Oh my—_ Keith! You’re brilliant!”

Keith ducked his head at the praise, but seemed happy that Pidge had caught on. Like it made his idea more valid, since someone else thought it, too. “After everything with the Blade, and the vision, I got to thinking,” he explained, though Pidge’s eyes had unfocused as she put the parts of his plan together in her head. “I figured—the Garrison had been hiding away evidence of alien life for _decades._ They knew there was something bigger out there, and as far as I could tell, they were trying to cover it up. With the technology available to them, they _had_ to have had some kind of scanner. And no offense, kiddo, but since they had more resources to use and didn’t have to build it out of scraps—”

“—it was probably a pretty powerful one,” she breathed with a nod, finishing the thought. “Way more powerful than mine. It makes so much _sense,_ Keith. If they’re covering up alien activity, they’d need something to _detect_ the activity in the first place, something to record it. To use as—as a warning system.”

Keith nodded. “And if they’ve been covering it up for as long as I think they have—”

“—then they probably have records of any alien activity on Earth for the last seventy, eighty years.” For a moment, Pidge sank into the realization. If any of that activity included Galran forces… For a second time, understanding hit her like a brick to the face. She blinked at him, her excited grin softening into something a little quieter, a little more somber. “They may have records of when the Galra touched down. When your—when your mother, or grandmother or grandfather or whoever it was… we may be able to trace it back to them. Compare it to Galra records, see any missions or squads that ended up on Earth, somehow.”

Keith ducked his head again, slightly, and while his expression was schooled into something neutral, there was something like hope in his eyes and Pidge relished in it. “It’s not much,” he admitted, shaking his head, “and it’s probably just a shot in the dark. I mean, I know it’s all speculation. I don’t even have _proof,_ really, of any of it. It’s just—I’ve been…” He trailed off, lifting a hand to scratch at the side of his head again. “I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, y’know? About everything.” He glanced up at her again and offered a small shrug. “It’s the closest thing to answers I may ever get.”

An odd intensity surged through her, and she squared her shoulders, holding his gaze, a small smile still touching her lips as she took his hand again. She shifted, facing him directly, and in a rare show of openness, Keith held her eyes steadily, direct contact. The emotion in them was raw, vulnerable—and plain as day. Confusion and desperation and anger and hope. Her voice was steady, solid, when she promised, “I’ll help however I can.” And her words were genuine, and they were words she’d take to her grave. Because Keith—he was family. She’d do anything for family.

And he smiled at her, and it was open and warm and reached his eyes as his free hand rose to join their clasped fingers, wrapping warmly around the back of her small hand. “I appreciate it, squirt,” he said gratefully.

And then Pidge was lunging forward, throwing her arms around his waist and holding on to him tightly, glasses skewing sideways but it didn’t really matter. “If any of the other guys tried to call me squirt, I’d kick ‘em in the quiznaks,” she mumbled into him.

And Keith—edgy, hothead, loner Keith—let out a laugh that she felt through his whole body as she hugged him. Long, warm arms wrapped around her and held her close, a hand finding her hair and ruffling it fondly.

“I know, squirt,” he laughed, and it was music to her ears. “I’ll be sure to tell Lance it’s your new favorite.”

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of headcanons:  
> \- Something sketchy is going on at the Garrison. I don't know. From episode 1 it kinda made me just... ? Stop? And think like, something's up, here. So that's a thing. It might be all in my head but y'know, that's where the fic came from. so.  
> \- Shiro is forever Space Dad and no one can convince me he wasn't the one to break through to Keith after everything went down with the Blade of Marmora, I mean that's practically canon but still  
> \- Pidge hates nicknames about her size, but Keith gets a free pass because the first time the name "pipsqueak" left his lips she lost every modicum of her composure and spent a good ten minutes doubled over on the floor, laughing hard enough that her abdomen hurt for literal days  
> -Keith is repressed AS HELL though I guess that's pretty goddamn canon
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Like I said, this is my first Voltron fic so I don't think the characterization is quite there, yet, but it's definitely something I plan to work on for the future. All comments welcome!


End file.
